The Antarcticans (33 page)

“Hello again.” She nodded politely at Arkita. “Gavin, we need to head to the medical bay in the morning.” She saw a glance pass between him and Arkita; she couldn’t place the look. “I apologize if I was interrupting something,”

“I’ll let you go, Gavin,” Arkita said. “Lucifer needs me for something anyway.”

Gavin and Noila went into their quarters. “What was that all about?” Noila asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Is she still chasing after you?” Noila asked casually as she walked into the bathroom to take off her makeup. She stared into the mirror as she wiped her eyeliner away.

Gavin didn’t answer; Noila heard some rough shuffling in the bedroom. “You okay, honey?”

“Yeah. No, nothing is going on,” he called back, his voice choppy.

Noila looked into the mirror and saw Gavin scratching the back of his head. She knew his nervous tic. She put down her cotton ball, which was smeared with makeup, and walked to face him. He was fixated on a blue-velvet box on the table.

“I didn’t ask if something was going on, but now I will. Is there something going on between the two of you?” Noila put her hands on her hips.

Gavin sat down on the bed and put his head in his hands. He sighed. “It was only once, and it was a mistake. There was alcohol, and you were gone and—”

Noila shook her head, stepped back into the bathroom, and slammed the door.

Behind the mirror, Arkita stood biting her long painted nails in anticipation. “Finally,” she said. She would let Lucifer know as soon as she could.

…

Early in the morning, Dr. Cristofari met them at the door. “I’m so glad you came. Joshua’s having a very difficult time. One of the hallucinations has trapped him, and he’s unable to communicate with me any longer. You’ll see what I mean when you get in there.” She looked at Gavin and Noila, who were standing unusually far apart.

Gavin went through the preparation process, and then Dr. Cristofari guided him into the room. Noila saw Lucifer sitting in the corner; he had resumed his human form and had his finger to his nose. Noila knew he wanted her to keep a secret, and after last night’s revelation from Gavin, she didn’t feel bad about it. She helped Gavin into the white carbon-fiber bed next to Joshua’s. There was a seat between the two beds, slightly elevated, with two steps leading up to it. Noila sat between them and took each of their hands. She leaned over to Gavin and whispered in his ear.

“You owe me. You do whatever you need to do in there to save Joshua, or I’ll never forgive you.” She straightened herself up and nodded to Dr. Cristofari that she was ready.

The room dimmed, and the sound of a rhythmic heartbeat drummed through the room. Noila saw green lights swirl above both their heads and felt Gavin’s body tense.

Gavin dropped out of the void and into Joshua’s world. He felt unsure of his purpose this time, having failed during his last couple of tries. The world was dark, and rain was pounding against a broken cobblestone road. Jagged mountains surrounded the small city he was in and reached for the sky. The streets were narrow, and the dense buildings closed in on him; the smell of industrial smoke filled his nose. He saw a building that looked like a city hall a few blocks ahead of him. Its windows blazed with lights, and he faintly saw people milling around outside it.

“Joshua?” he called into the night. A metal object struck the cobblestones in a nearby alley.

Gavin took off running in the direction of the city hall, focusing on the large clock above the building’s portico. His legs were powerful and didn’t fatigue; he felt like he was a teenager again. He kept yelling Joshua’s name as he ran. Lights came on in the windows of the buildings he passed. A large flock of bats flew overhead, swirling in a mass, darting in multiple directions but holding the overall direction of the flock. He reached the stairs of the city hall and galloped up them until he was under the clock. To his shock and surprise, it wasn’t people on the portico but creatures that were a grotesque mixture of human, bat, and dragon. They walked upright, with talons jutting from their striated wings. They had human-shaped bodies and bat heads with vicious-looking teeth and red eyes. The beasts hissed and shrieked at Gavin. He clasped his hands together in prayer for a few seconds then tried the doors; they were solid wood with iron reinforcements. He tried to open the doors, but they were locked. When he turned around, the human-bat creatures were gathering and moving toward him. The south side of the portico looked to be clear of the beasts, so he ran to it; to his relief, none of the creatures chased him.

He rounded the corner and spotted a ramp that led to the basement. The door was slightly ajar, and he peeked inside to find a man wearing a cook’s uniform and smoking a cigarette. He waved his hands, indicating that Gavin couldn’t come through this door, but Gavin slammed into him and threw him out of the way. He bolted through a door that led to the lurid hallways of building’s basement. Suddenly he stopped running and looked around. The rooms on either side of him were empty and dark. There was light coming from one of the doorways up ahead, but he could hear and smell that it was the kitchen. The hallway ended with a staircase. Gavin looked up and saw lights and heard several voices. He ascended the steps cautiously.

Lucifer got up from his chair and walked over to Noila, Joshua, and Gavin. He placed his hands in the green swirling light over their heads and closed his eyes. Noila tilted her head up and looked at his face. She was hopeful, confused, and angry. She still didn’t trust what Lucifer was doing; the whole ship felt like a setup to her.

Gavin walked up the polished stone stairs with railings embellished with gold-and-iron carvings—statues of small cherubs at spaced intervals standing lovingly on pedestals just outside the railings. He turned the last corner and reached the ground floor. He stepped onto plush red carpet with gold patterns that matched the railings. It led to a few stairs and an altar. The space reminded him of the churches he had visited in his youth, when his mother would parade him to every church in their hometown for Sunday services. The altar was on the far side of the building. Standing on the carpet, halfway across the room, was Lucifer. He was dressed in white robes lined with silver. Tremendous wings unfolded behind him, reaching for the edges of the building, feathers upon feathers of white and silver. He was much taller than the last time Gavin had seen him. In his hand, which he held out palm up, was a swirling, misty, green ether with small white lights orbiting the center.

His voice boomed through the building. “Your son is below us, locked deep within the heart of this building and his mind. His imprisonment will be eternal if you don’t succeed in releasing him. I’m holding him in balance right now, but I’m not stronger than an individual’s will. You alone have the power to save him. Don’t be distracted along the way, or his hell will consume him in an unquenchable fire. Sit down. I’ll take you to him.” He pointed to a gilded chair with black Georgian spikes jutting out from each leg.

Gavin moved past Lucifer, who was twice his size. Centering his mind and focusing his heart, he turned and faced Lucifer when he reached the chair. Lucifer nodded once, and Gavin sat down and placed his arms on the chair. Mighty chains moved, lowering the chair through the floor. Lucifer fell out of Gavin’s sight as he descended to the basement level, where he saw an abandoned room with stacked chairs and a dusty stage. He descended farther, into the subbasement, where mice scurried, and the rich earth was pungent and black. The chains continued to lower him, through layers of forgotten dungeons and storage rooms. He passed skeletons and chained animals that were long departed. His chair was just above a circular hole cut into thick stone. Gavin passed through the hole, his face close to the dripping stone, and as he emerged through the bottom he was hovering over a cavern big enough to fit a three story building inside. The mossy walls and dripping ground water mixed with the thick tropical air and incense from the temples, coating the walls with a sooty film. He looked closer to the temples with colossal gilded golden dragons adorning the roofs. Below them, he saw men dancing at altars, pouring coconut milk, streaking red paint, and spinning wreaths of flowers in the air. A chant he didn’t recognize reverberated off the cavern walls. Small monkeys ran through the space, their tiny hands snatching up morsels of food and drink. Gavin’s chair floated through the air, its wooden legs dangling hundreds of feet above the ground as the chains uncoiled from their reservoir. The chair lowered, then touched down to the cavern’s rock floor with a loud thud.

Gavin stood up and looked into the two temples on either side of him; he saw doors in the back of the temples leading to separate rooms. Priests were dancing and chanting in front of these doors, so he couldn’t see inside. His chair had landed in the center of an altar, a replica of the one he had seen from above. Red-and-golden twists were painted on the dirt-and-stone floor, and rocks etched out of the ground provided steps to an altar with a blue cloth laid over it. That area was dark, with no one paying attention to it. A large leather-bound black book sat in the middle of the altar. Gavin couldn’t see beyond that, as the light from the two temples only extended so far. As he headed to the temple on the left, the holy men in their hooded blue robes shooed him away. “No, no, no, not for you,” they said, then went back to their chants and rituals.

“Joshua, where are you, son?” Gavin yelled.

The men all turned toward him and pressed their hands against their ears under their robes and moaned in pain. Gavin walked into the space around the altar in front of the two secluded rooms in one of the temples. They spun in orderly circles and kept their distance from him. He looked across the cavern to the temple on the other side. The exact same scene was playing out in the other temple except the men were in blood-red robes. The two temples were in perfect synchrony. He walked to one of the robed figures closest to him and chased him around the circle, tapping him on the shoulder. The shadowy figure swatted his hand and tried to move away from him while staying in his circle.

One of the holy men let out a yell—a word Gavin didn’t recognize—and everyone in each temple joined hands and fell to the floor, prostrating so their foreheads were against the cold stone in the direction of the altar in the center. Gavin got a good view of the rooms with the priests out of the way. He saw beyond the offerings of golden vats of coconut milk and incense. He stepped toward the door, taking the steps up to the first level of the inner sanctum. Behind the second doorway, three bodies were wrapped in royal-blue gauze, bound like the mummies of Egypt. Two Gothic-looking lanterns hung on either side of the altar at the center of the cavern. Flames burst into them and illuminated the dark altar; the lights on the two side temples extinguished simultaneously.

Victor rose from behind the center altar; his wounds from his cactus encounter in the desert the last time Gavin had met with him were gone. He stood in a black shirt and black pants, his cape a royal blue, and held a staff that emitted black smoke.

“Rise,” he commanded.

The holy men got up on their knees, their hands pressed together in prayer. They either didn’t see Gavin or ignored that he was stepping into the first sanctuary and making his way to the three bodies. The stone floor was wet and sticky with the milk the priests had thrown over it in offering, and the thick incense made it hard for him to see and breathe. The ambient light from the main altar cast shadows, but he could no longer see into the inner sanctuary. He heard muffled breaths and followed them.

“Bring the first,” Victor commanded, then slammed his staff into the floor to reinforce his point.

Two blue robed men closest to the door, stood up, and walked toward where Gavin was. Seeing them coming, he pressed himself into the shadow of one of the tall columns that held up the roof. As they passed him, he smelled the same scent of smoke and tar that Victor gave off when he had first encountered him. Although Gavin lost sight of the two when they entered through the second door, he heard some struggling and conflict in the dark. They came out carrying one of the bodies, which writhed in their grasp. They lost hold of it, and it fell to the floor. They picked it back up and brought it to down to the chair in which Gavin had descended from the ceiling. They placed the slumped body in the chair, pulled out a long curved sword, and sliced the bottom of the gauze. Two bare feet poked out and found their footing on the floor. They looked like female feet, but Gavin couldn’t be sure from where he was standing.

He was captivated by what might happen next. The men pulled the woman to her feet and forced her to walk toward the altar. With his free hand, Victor motioned for them to come to him. The woman’s feet could only take small steps, as the gauze restricted her stride. They led her up the stairs to the altar then pushed her down to bow in front of Victor. He opened the black leather book on the altar, raised his staff in the air, then read aloud strange-sounding words from the text. The dark substance at the staff’s end spun faster in its orbit; small flares reached out from the confines of the metal prongs. When Victor was done reading, he nodded to the two men, who heaved the woman onto the altar and stepped back. Victor’s eyes were filled with lust, and he stepped back holding the staff at the very end that had been against the floor, and slowly lowered it toward the woman’s head. The black smoke reached out to the blue gauze, and from the shape beneath the gauze that Gavin assumed was the head, a stream of green smoke rose. The blackness wound into it, pulling it out strand by strand. The robed men in both temples suddenly jumped to their feet and chanted in unison again. The sound was dark and eerie and unsettled Gavin; it vibrated through him like rough brambles. As the woman’s back arched toward the staff, Victor smiled greedily while the green smoke clung tenuously to her body. Gavin broke his gaze as his mind returned him to the reason he was there, and he hurried into the second sanctuary. He found it difficult not to get lost in the vivid world of Joshua’s mind.